Halftimeonline: Haha

Chuck D: You 36 years old going to work every morning talking about I can’t stop watching it!

Halftimeonline: Haha

Chuck D: Women talking about it on lunch break. You ain’t got nothing else better to do with your damn time? I ain’t surprised at Flav I’m surprised at your old ass talking about this wonderful topic in your life. You need something to do. Here’s another thing about rhyme philosophy. If it’s always about dumbing down then what stops a sixth grader from being the best rapper in the world? I ask ya’ll. They got access to beats.

Jbutters: For me I’d say I don’t really want to hear what a 6th grader has to talk about.

Jbutters: Yea.

Chuck D: Now here you go. Here’s Chuck D’s devil’s advocate. If your 28 year old ain’t saying nothing how can you tell a 6th grader he is saying much less? If the 28 year old ain’t experienced how can you blame a six year old dreaming about what the 28 year old ain’t do [but says he did]. The 6th grader is young, they can rhyme the same, and they have beats. That’s why knowledge, wisdom, understanding and wit are always the common denominator that separates the standard. The standard has to come with some experience. You don’t have any wit in the sixth grade. You ain’t seasoned. That’s why Jay-Z at 36 or 37 has the wit to cut across and he can talk about things and you believe him. He even sounds like a kid in a way. His tone cuts through. I know this sounds like the Jay-Z interview but I’m just giving you reasons.

Halftimeonline: Haha

Chuck D: He never really dumbed himself down [even though] he says he could come like Common but he dumbs himself down. He can’t come like Common. Common comes like Common and Jay-Z comes like Jay-Z with a certain tone and wit. I’d like to see more groups because you just don’t see groups in hip hop. That hurts. When’s the last time you’ve seen a group trade on lines. Maybe Jurrassic Five.

Halftimeonline: Smif n Wessun.

Chuck D: Now everybody in the group got their saved up rhymes and they step to the table without practicing or rehearsing and go for delf. That only worked for Wu-Tang and that barely worked for them. When was the last time you seen a female rapper?

Marcus: Wow.

Chuck D: Well, I got one on my label called Cool Grrl Orders. They’re good with it and they hold their own. They ain’t trying to be dudes. They are rappers and they rap. Their DJ is a drummer so when they come on stage she introduces them and starts playing a beat on the drums and they come out freestyling. Then before they go into the set she goes behind the tables and sparks it up. Guys don’t even want to come on nowhere near them. So if hip hop has so much going on with it why are there so many vacancies: groups, girl groups, female producers?

Halftimeonline: I think its interesting one of the key things you keep mentioning is the standard. I know you’ve mentioned RUN-DMC and I would assume LL Cool J, Rakim, KRS and others. What kind of things did you take from them to set your own standard of emceeing?

Chuck D: Well, #1 raise the speed limit. Only one emcee could mess with our speed limit and keep it moving onstage and that was the super emcee called Big Daddy Kane. Public Enemy usually messed around with 116, 109 or 112 beats per minute with power and speed. My standard was to rap harder and stronger and move on stage and have people [trying] to figure out how I did it even at an old age. It was almost like a punk rock level of speed. My standard was don’t get lazy in the beats per minute and rock it powerful, fast and to make sure it was very hard for anyone to try and repeat that. That was the standard I set for myself. Like you might be able to rap just as fast but you won’t be able to move side to side, running and jumping in the air and rapping at the same time. You’re either going to run out of breath, your voice is gonna crack or you might not say anything meaningful at that speed. I also understood my limitations so I had a team with me. I had Flava Flav, Terminator X, later on DJ Lord and Griff so I can give out doses at high speeds for short blasts of time. Public Enemy headlined not because we asked for it but because people were like I don’t know what the hell they are doing but we are gonna have to have them go on last.

Another thing with Public Enemy you can’t take a P.E. record and mix it in with a classic old school set. Only a few records or you’d have to have a Public Enemy megamix. You can’t take Biz Markie and then throw on Public Enemy because that will throw your whole thing off. Usually they can play everything at the same beats per minute but you can’t mix us in just like you can’t really mix in Beatles records. You gotta be like here is the Beatles hour. Same thing with Elvis. So that had a lot to do with our speed and varying tempos of our records. Big Daddy Kane and Marley Marl records could get close but they weren’t abrasive, they were just high tempo. Kane was the only dude that could deal with the tempo we dealt with, with power and speed. Instead of being very athletic on stage he got more into dance moves with Scoob and Scrap. He’s the most gifted rapper of all time. He can do it all. I thought it was kinda derogatory when they started calling Biggie the greatest rapper of all time. I’m like you’re wrong how can that be? That was just a whole bunch of NY hype. May he rest in peace but that’s an album and a half of material. I’ve seen Biggie get on stage and spank the hell out of a spot before I saw Nas or Jay-z but that was Puffy getting behind Big saying you get your big self out there and rock. Puffy hyped up Biggie and Big came out and stood in one spot dressed like a mack and was killing the crowd. If Big would have had four or five albums he’d be ranked very high but he didn’t get that shot to do it. Tupac to me was a brilliant cat. He was an all around dude, an actor. He was a real triple threat. But as a rapper he was one of the most fearless guys because he was able to touch on subjects that cats were afraid to do. Dear Mama, Brenda’s Got a Baby, and Keep Ya Head Up, those were the hardest records for anyone to do. Other rappers had that chance to do those types of songs but they felt it was soft. Pac took those chances and that’s why a lot of us remember Tupac.

Halftimeonline: I heard you had put out one list that had Shaq as one of your favorite rappers of all time. Is that true?

Chuck D: Nah, Shaq is the best athlete to ever rhyme because he did the most believable rhymes. He’s also the biggest B-boy I’ve ever seen. I didn’t put him in there as one of my all-time favorites. I had him as an underrated cat.

Halftimeonline: One question I’ve always wanted to ask you was what were your thoughts the first time you saw a white kid wearing a Fear of a Black Planet T-shirt. Did you feel that they were receiving the message or missing it and just following a fad in music?

Chuck D: I grew up in Long Island so it was an all black town surrounded by an all white town and I went to a predominantly white high school. I knew that white kids would do their damndest to search out something that wasn’t exposed to them. I knew the psychology of white folks and that you ain’t have to change your game up in order for people to follow you. You have to stand by your values and the deeper you go into your blackness you find out that people will follow you. The ones that might be scared or run away are the people who look just like you. If you know your people you expect that to happen but you keep it moving on the path. Our first tour was with the Beastie Boys and Murphy’s Law in 1987. By the time we got on the Def Jam tour and all of the black shows we already had a standing with the white kids that just said whoa! When we first came out we were very, very radical looking. It was Nation of Islam and Black Panthers. White kids didn’t know and black kids didn’t know it either by the middle of the 80s. I remember hanging up a flier and someone asking me, “Who’s this Malcolm the 10th?”

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Posted by Jbutters on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 and is filed under HIP HOP ICON SERIES.